Search Engine Land - When I am asked if I have a link building guide or manual which summarizes my own personal best practices, I explain that every single site must have its own individual link building best practices guide, which takes into account the subject, industry, and competitive landscape. And even then, the best practices cannot be cast in stone. Some years ago it was considered a best practice to submit your sites URLs to WebCrawler, Excite, and even Magellan. Who? Not long ago a link from DMOZ was considered a must.17 Comments

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Whats really interesting is that Eric spends a lot of time telling everyone what not to do - but he doesnt really write anything on actual strategies.Much as hes admired in the link dev world for his reputation, his postings are generally empty fluff - which is a real shame because the guy should obviously know a thing about link building worth sharing.Cmon Eric - stop being pointlessly generic and actually write some degree of detail about your work. :)

ibrian - in the middle of the article is an example client site and an example link target site. The site:<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1" color="#1651ca">The National Safe Boating Councilhttp://www.safeboatingcouncil.org</font>The target:<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1" color="#1651ca">Ocean County Library Boating Safety Resourceshttp://www.oceancounty.lib.nj.us/Link2Topic/boating_safety.htm</font>Im sorry this extremely vertical real-life example was too pedantic and that I didnt explicity write about how this specific example might spark some creative thinking which would then spark some creative searching which would then lead one to find even more high value targets like the exampe target. The client was extremely excited to receive a targeted list of 200+ boating safety links pages I found hosted at high trust government and public library web sites all over the US. In future columns I will try harder to provide more detailed examples :) -Eric

If the Desphunn button had by now been renamed the Ho-Hum button as I have advocated, then it would have received my Ho-Hum. However Ill put my comment here. An executive summary might be: Im here and I do things I cant describe.

lol, thats funny Barry. A Ho Hum button would be great for Sphinn. Its just when you have such a mix of people in terms of their SEO knowledge, its hard to please everyone. When I spoke at the Online Marketing Summit last year, I had excellent reviews from most people, but the advanced SEO attendees wanted more specifics and advanced techniques. Conversely, some of the people that gave me high marks had comments like, very informative but almost a little too technical...lol. But this article would have been better with some real tips on what to do.

Barry - what did I not describe? Is link week supposed to be pure tutorial, opinion, advice, or what? The gist of this column is that best practices for link building have to vary by project, and I include examples why as well as a real-world example. Since the only thing I seem to be good at anymore is pissing people off, or worse, boring them, please help me to understand where I can add value? Im serious. Tell me what aspects of link building you want to know about. Ill do everything I can to deliver, and if it sucks, we can all urge Danny to replace me. I asked Danny to include Debra and Rae in LW because hearing from me 52 times a year would put anyone to sleep. It appears that even 26 is too many. If your feeling is that its time to dust off my own blog and keep my boring ho-hum thoughts on my own site, I understand. Will do.

OK, lets give this a go. I just created a Link Building Best Practices section on my site, using blogger becasue its so easy/quick. I will try not to bore you. Comments as to the specific topics youd like to see me cover are welcome. I can add to it over the coming years and hopefully provide a little value.Eric Wards Link Building Best Practiceshttp://www.ericward.com/bestpractices/

Eric, all you said was that a PR3 link need not be overlooked.Thats hardly revelatory.I know not every article needs to be a tutorial, but seriously, when people are positioned as experts but focus on writing basic commentary, it just reads as throwing crumbs to the masses.Compare what you write to Jim Boykins blog posts on IP ranges and link hubs, and similar issues.

I think this quote sums up the content nicely: "The best practice is that there arent any."Not complaining, Eric, but I can see where Brians coming from here. I try to read everything you put out, but to be honest, I cant remember anything specific about any of it. Come on man, dish! :D

I admire guys like Jim B. and hear what you are saying about things like IP ranges and link hubs. Heres my dilemma. I dont care an iota about IP ranges or link hubs if the intent is to manipulate rank, because I dont believe in that practice. Its a Best Practice Catch-22. Somewhere someone knows the "best practice" for it, but for me there is no best practice for any tactic that has as an objective to fool an algorithm. That said, for truly excellent content/resources, my style of link building will accomplish the same thing, but not because of a technical manipulation. When you seek links from the highest trust venues only willing to link to the highest value content, and if your content meets their criteria and earns a link, then good things happen, one of which is higher rankings. Maybe the truth I need to embrace is that my personal best practices are only applicable to a very narrow type and quality of content, and for the majority of readers of what I write, they are useless. As TheMadHat said when he channeled Tyler Durden, The first rule of link building is?I think then its best to take individual and specific questions regarding best practices at the new Link Building Best Practices Q&A mentioned above.

You know whats frustrating for me? First I read Erics column and thought "damn, he is slamming our blog" - Link Building Best Practices. Then I read all of the comments above and felt a little sorry for him because people seem to be wanting more from him than they would probably ever provide publicly in their own area of expertise. But now I see he has set up his own Best Practices section. This is going to seem self serving, but we created Link Building Best Practices for the exact reasons that are being described above. To hear best practices from others -- and share them with all. We truly set it up to serve the link building community. It is open to all - write a post and send it to us - if its good well post it - including links to your references. We have had a couple submissions so far, but I am certain there are many more of you out there than can add some quality info.This is not meant to usurp Erics blog (I doubt I could), his is more of a quesiton/answer approach. Ours is for others to share their own experiences, receive a little credit, and educate others all at the same time.I did not add a link to the blog on purpose - hate to be confused with a spammer. But I think you know where to find us.